Industrial laser equipment is commonly used for different industrial activities such as cutting, welding, cleaning, machining and engraving of many solid materials. Because of the high energy levels emitted by the laser beams of laser heads on such pieces of equipment, it is common to place such laser equipment within a closed room so that it can be isolated from workers, thereby preventing any incident where radiations of the laser beam could reach a worker.
Not only such dedicated rooms represent a considerable investment, they also require much dedicated space in a manufacturing plant and offer low flexibility when it comes to the size of objects they can accommodate. To alleviate these problems, laser containment devices are now preferably used over laser heads, thereby eliminating the need of a dedicated laser processing room. However, such containment devices need to have flexible flanges in order to accommodate small irregularities in workpieces. However, these flanges, when flexing, may leave a gap with the workpiece so that radiations from the laser beam may escape and potentially endanger a worker in the vicinity of the laser processing equipment.
There is therefore a need for an improved laser processing equipment and for an improved processing method using such laser processing equipment.